♥Colour Combination♥
Inspired by the more vibrant and warm weathered seasons that are approaching us (slower than I would like but whatever), I feel that now is an appropriate time to talk about one of the most basic principles of fashion design and styling: color. Spring and summer garments hold a great deal of color possibilities, and while I’ll admit I’m not a color person, and my closet consists of mostly black and gray, it’s undeniable that understanding color theory and combinations can prove useful for a variety of reasons.
A new color combination can add innovation to a seemingly dull wardrobe and can completely transform a look from winter to spring, spring to summer, and so on. Color theory is relevant to several aspects of style besides clothing as well. For example, hair color, makeup choices, interior design, and more are all types of style and design that revolve around color choice.
While the color wheel may seem intimidating at first, it really is easy to use and super helpful for piecing together flattering and unlikely color combinations. To be great at anything, you first have to know the rules so you may test them and break them, if you so choose to, and the principals of the color wheel are no exception to this. The color wheel holds a lot of information and, quite frankly, more than I’m willing to discuss within the limits of this blog post. However, these basic elements of color theory are more than enough to get you by and help you understand color relationships.
1. Hue, Tint, Tone, & Shade.
Hue is a color in it’s purest form. Tint, tone, and shade are all derivatives of Hue. Tint = hue + white, tone = hue + grey, shade = hue+ black. These four elements are used to create the color your eyes see.
Saturation, not to be confused with any of the previously mentioned elements, refers to the intensity/vividness of the color. Colors that are highly saturated are bold and rich, while those that are desaturated lack in vibrancy. For example, saturation could be the difference between wearing a hot pink sweater or a baby pink sweater. Both can actually be the same exact color of pink but are just at different levels of saturation.
The primary colors are red, yellow, and blue. A.K.A you learned this in elementary school. These colors can not be formed by mixing other colors together, but can be combined in 100+ ways to make every color imaginable.
4. Secondary colors
Secondary colors are the colors that are formed after mixing each one of the primary colors together. Yellow + red = orange, red + blue = purple, blue + yellow = green.
5. Tertiary colors
Tertiary colors are the colors that are made from mixing secondary colors together along with primary colors. Some tertiary colors you may be familiar with would be orang-yellow, green-yellow (lime), orange-red (coral), blue-green (teal), etc.
6. Cool colors
Cool colors are all derived from shades of blue, also known as cool hues. The easiest way to remember what cool colors are, is to think of what colors would best illustrate a cool temperature such as greens, violets, light pinks, etc. Cool colors look wonderful on pale skin with pink undertones and silver jewelry.
7. Warm colors
Warm colors, the opposite of cool colors, are based around hues of reds, oranges, yellows, etc. Warm colors look best on warmer skin tones and gold jewelry.
8. Neutrals
Neutrals are colors that do not pop out or attract a lot of attention to the eye such as black, beige, taupe, olive, and more. They literally go with everything and anything, and can be used to slowly integrate color into your wardrobe by pairing bolder color combinations with them.
Thanks for reading♥
Thanks for reading♥